[00:00.020 --> 00:08.260] [SPEAKER_08]: ...to WBAI 99.5 FM, Pacifica Radio, and online at WBAI.org.
[00:08.360 --> 00:13.100] [SPEAKER_08]: The role of media in a democratic society should be to empower people to make decisions.
[00:13.680 --> 00:16.800] [SPEAKER_08]: WBAI, speaking truth to power for over 50 years.
[00:17.100 --> 00:27.020] [SPEAKER_08]: You have very few powerful media outlets that are actually doing the two things that I think are the most central aims of good journalism, which is to give voice to the voiceless and hold those in power accountable.
[00:30.180 --> 00:32.220] [SPEAKER_07]: WBAI, your community alternative.
[00:34.980 --> 00:41.800] [SPEAKER_07]: And you are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM, where the time is just about 7 p.m.
[00:42.180 --> 00:45.380] [SPEAKER_07]: It's time for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
[00:48.460 --> 00:53.600] [SPEAKER_00]: Your smartphone, your computer, your television, all of this technology is...
[00:54.160 --> 00:59.960] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes, that's the ad for Off The Hook, which you would be hearing if it weren't time for Off The Hook, but it is, and it's time for Off The Hook.
[01:05.280 --> 01:27.040] [SPEAKER_06]: The telephone keeps ringing So I ripped it off the wall I cut myself while shaving Now I can't make a call We couldn't get much worse Good, bon diddly bon But the best is back the worst I hope that's understood Bon diddly bon
[02:35.480 --> 02:36.940] [SPEAKER_07]: Very good evening to you.
[02:37.200 --> 02:39.740] [SPEAKER_07]: The program is Off The Hook.
[02:40.480 --> 02:41.160] [SPEAKER_07]: Rob T.
[02:41.280 --> 02:44.300] [SPEAKER_07]: Firefly here with you in the studio, and I am joined by Alex.
[02:44.820 --> 02:45.860] [SPEAKER_07]: Good evening, everybody.
[02:46.720 --> 02:47.900] [SPEAKER_07]: And Jim is here.
[02:48.160 --> 02:48.380] Hello.
[02:49.100 --> 02:51.840] [SPEAKER_07]: And on the phone, we're joined by Bernie S.
[02:52.300 --> 02:53.680] [SPEAKER_12]: Greetings from Philadelphia.
[02:55.320 --> 03:00.140] [SPEAKER_07]: Our colleagues, Emmanuel and Kyle, are away on assignment, where we cannot get hold of them.
[03:00.320 --> 03:08.460] [SPEAKER_07]: All attempts to do so are failing at this point, so we will move on and keep trying to get hold of them and see what happens, because we do live radio here.
[03:11.460 --> 03:13.420] [SPEAKER_07]: So, Alex, you've been away for a bit.
[03:13.840 --> 03:16.820] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have, and I have to say it's fantastic to be back here.
[03:16.960 --> 03:19.480] [SPEAKER_01]: It's great to see everybody's face, especially yours, Rob.
[03:19.480 --> 03:23.360] [SPEAKER_01]: I wish Emmanuel and Kyle were here, but hopefully they'll be joining us soon.
[03:23.460 --> 03:36.820] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the last time that I was on Off The Hook, I was still in London, as a matter of fact, and I just moved back, I guess, excuse me, about seven months ago back to New York, back to my old place.
[03:36.820 --> 03:48.980] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, now that I essentially work for myself and I've started my own law firm, I can finally tell people exactly what I do after all these years of working for other people.
[03:49.760 --> 03:58.040] [SPEAKER_01]: When I was in London, I was information security counsel for a major luxury conglomerate and then chief compliance officer of the same.
[03:58.040 --> 04:07.660] [SPEAKER_01]: And now, having moved back to New York, I started my own firm called Blackstone Law Group and a separate information security consultancy called Black Chambers.
[04:08.020 --> 04:18.060] [SPEAKER_01]: And the way we operate is that we have injected legal privilege or the attorney-client privilege into the process of information security.
[04:18.060 --> 04:34.040] [SPEAKER_01]: So prior to this sort of innovation, if you had an information security consultancy come in and document a bunch of things and document vulnerabilities during a security assessment, all of that would have been discoverable by the government or a plaintiff.
[04:34.220 --> 04:37.180] [SPEAKER_01]: And they operate only through my law firm now.
[04:37.320 --> 04:41.520] [SPEAKER_01]: So the Black Chambers side works only through Blackstone, Blackstone Law Group.
[04:41.520 --> 04:47.240] [SPEAKER_01]: And what we do is rewrap all of our findings and our analysis in the protection of legal privilege.
[04:47.300 --> 04:57.500] [SPEAKER_01]: And that allows all the parties to be a lot more candid with each other and mitigates the risk that anybody will ever get their hands on this very, very highly sensitive documentation.
[04:57.980 --> 05:00.380] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's been very exciting to be back.
[05:00.380 --> 05:13.560] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm happy to announce that we received our notification from the Speaker Selection Committee for the 11th Hope that we will be speaking on two separate talks come July.
[05:13.940 --> 05:15.120] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's very exciting.
[05:15.620 --> 05:17.380] [SPEAKER_01]: If you want me to go into them, I will, Rob.
[05:18.300 --> 05:18.700] [SPEAKER_07]: Perhaps.
[05:18.920 --> 05:24.060] [SPEAKER_07]: But for those unfamiliar, the 11th Hope is our Hacker Conference here in Manhattan.
[05:24.540 --> 05:25.660] [SPEAKER_07]: It happens every other year.
[05:25.780 --> 05:26.840] [SPEAKER_07]: This is the other year, folks.
[05:27.020 --> 05:32.520] [SPEAKER_07]: And we may have mentioned this once or twice on this program over the previous few months, haven't we, Bernie?
[05:33.300 --> 05:33.700] [SPEAKER_12]: Absolutely.
[05:33.800 --> 05:35.060] [SPEAKER_12]: We've been harping on it.
[05:35.060 --> 05:40.340] [SPEAKER_12]: Well, not really harping, but sort of spreading the word about the 11th Hope.
[05:40.560 --> 05:44.160] [SPEAKER_12]: I've been doing this since 1994, and it's truly a labor of love.
[05:44.440 --> 05:52.340] [SPEAKER_12]: None of us make money on this, but it's a really exciting event to learn about all the stuff you were afraid to ask or didn't know who to ask.
[05:52.800 --> 05:54.360] [SPEAKER_12]: And it's held right there in New York City.
[05:55.160 --> 06:06.820] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, and we've been going through so many awesome talk submissions, and the submissions are now closed because we've got a great pool of things to choose from.
[06:07.100 --> 06:08.980] [SPEAKER_07]: Some things have been announced as accepted already.
[06:09.140 --> 06:10.360] [SPEAKER_07]: Other things are still in the process.
[06:10.760 --> 06:13.300] [SPEAKER_07]: But I've got to say, this is an exciting one.
[06:14.380 --> 06:17.200] [SPEAKER_07]: Apart from yours, Alex, the other ones are good, too.
[06:17.200 --> 06:24.660] [SPEAKER_07]: I don't mean it like that, but yeah, I think we have some really good things shaping up.
[06:24.880 --> 06:27.280] [SPEAKER_07]: Our keynote, of course, Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing.
[06:29.880 --> 06:35.500] [SPEAKER_07]: And if you could go a little bit into, Alex, what you're going to discuss.
[06:35.500 --> 06:44.620] [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, the first one that we're going to be discussing is reverse engineering legal developments on reverse engineering.
[06:46.100 --> 06:53.480] [SPEAKER_01]: Recently, I think it was May 26, actually, there was a federal law called the Defense of Trade Secrets Act that was passed.
[06:53.700 --> 07:09.000] [SPEAKER_01]: And I will be speaking on this particular federal law, and in particular, the reverse engineering provision of the Defense of Trade Secrets Act, with a colleague of mine, whose name is Sebastian Holst, and he was with a company called Preemptive Solution.
[07:09.020 --> 07:12.120] [SPEAKER_01]: They work on a lot of source code obfuscation issues.
[07:12.360 --> 07:21.120] [SPEAKER_01]: And under the DTSA, what they have carved out specifically under federal law is an allowance for reverse engineering of trade secrets.
[07:21.300 --> 07:35.660] [SPEAKER_01]: So that under the definition of misappropriation is an exception, and that exception is reverse engineering, and this has got people all up in arms about what it means, and there's been a new EU directive to harmonize the law with the United States that's recently come down the pipes.
[07:36.380 --> 07:50.980] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, all of this is really questionable in terms of tying the right to reverse engineer to the law, and what are the mechanisms that you can protect yourself from reverse engineering, and what are the counterattacks to those protections, and the counterattacks to those counterattacks.
[07:51.040 --> 07:53.440] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's one talk that we will be engaged in.
[07:53.500 --> 07:56.520] [SPEAKER_01]: And the other one has to do with the Panama Papers.
[07:57.320 --> 08:12.540] [SPEAKER_01]: And my law firm and my information security consultancy has been involved since the outset of the Panama Papers in various aspects of investigating how this happened, and who did it, and why.
[08:13.680 --> 08:26.460] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this talk is going to be extremely, extremely interesting, because we're going to be analyzing certain documents and certain systems that have hitherto been unannounced in the media.
[08:26.760 --> 08:33.440] [SPEAKER_01]: And in particular, we'll be focusing on Mossack Fonseca, the law firm who was supposedly breached.
[08:33.660 --> 08:41.120] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was their data supposedly from an email server, 2.6 terabytes of data supposedly residing on an email server.
[08:41.240 --> 08:47.400] [SPEAKER_01]: That's one thing that we are going to analyze and quite possibly debunk during our talk that was breached.
[08:47.680 --> 08:55.800] [SPEAKER_01]: And Mossack Fonseca, what they did was, well, they were the law firm in Panama, but they had tentacles, or maybe I should say offices, all over the world.
[08:56.440 --> 09:00.160] [SPEAKER_01]: And they created shell companies in tax havens.
[09:00.220 --> 09:06.660] [SPEAKER_01]: And they were up to a lot of other very, very interesting things, which we will delve into in our talk.
[09:07.200 --> 09:21.920] [SPEAKER_01]: And today, as reported by the Guardian, somebody from the Mossack Fonseca office in, I believe it was Geneva, was picked up by the authorities and held on suspicion that he may have had some kind of involvement with the breach.
[09:22.060 --> 09:26.500] [SPEAKER_01]: And I believe the story is ongoing, and facts are coming in slowly.
[09:26.960 --> 09:31.360] [SPEAKER_01]: But this is something that we've always thought about as well, and our talk will get into.
[09:32.480 --> 09:42.100] [SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of suspicions that this was an inside job, and that this was quite possibly an IT person who became disillusioned with the practices of Mossack Fonseca.
[09:42.760 --> 09:44.120] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll get into it at our talk.
[09:44.120 --> 09:48.100] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to give away too much, you know, before people pay the price of admission, of course.
[09:48.380 --> 09:53.300] [SPEAKER_01]: But it will be very interesting, and we're going to be following this story very closely.
[09:53.840 --> 09:54.320] [SPEAKER_07]: Indeed.
[09:54.940 --> 10:03.900] [SPEAKER_07]: So this story, which came out in the Guardian today, just mentions a lot of the uncertainty that's surrounding the reasons for the arrest.
[10:04.060 --> 10:06.360] [SPEAKER_07]: Apparently, they're being kind of cagey about that.
[10:06.980 --> 10:07.780] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, no question.
[10:08.060 --> 10:10.440] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's deliberate.
[10:10.960 --> 10:18.640] [SPEAKER_01]: And in Switzerland, and I had worked quite a bit in Geneva as well, things are really on the rails there.
[10:18.760 --> 10:19.980] [SPEAKER_01]: They like to do everything by the books.
[10:20.080 --> 10:22.840] [SPEAKER_01]: They like to have the trains run exactly on time.
[10:23.360 --> 10:39.280] [SPEAKER_01]: And the other thing to remember about Switzerland is this is a country that is very, well, to its citizens and to its governmental officials, and especially its banking institutions, secrecy and nondisclosure are kind of part and parcel of the culture.
[10:40.160 --> 10:43.820] [SPEAKER_01]: So details coming out from the government may be slow.
[10:44.540 --> 10:46.440] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we have to deal with that.
[10:46.700 --> 11:00.380] [SPEAKER_01]: But this person apparently was, well, ICIJ was the organization to which the 2.6 terabytes of data were leaked by the whistleblower.
[11:00.660 --> 11:17.560] [SPEAKER_01]: And apparently ICIJ and the German paper that was involved in this, whose name I will not even try to attempt to butcher at this moment, because I don't have the phonetic pronunciation in front of me, have claimed that they highly doubt that the person who is held in Geneva was in fact the whistleblower.
[11:18.260 --> 11:18.660] [SPEAKER_07]: Huh.
[11:18.940 --> 11:21.700] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, this is definitely something we'll be keeping a close eye on.
[11:21.860 --> 11:24.660] [SPEAKER_07]: And of course, talking about it, hope.
[11:25.780 --> 11:28.880] [SPEAKER_07]: We have some other special guests lined up for later in the program.
[11:29.820 --> 11:33.640] [SPEAKER_07]: But before we do that, Bernie, is there anything you want to tell us about them?
[11:34.480 --> 11:35.720] [SPEAKER_12]: About our guest tonight?
[11:36.000 --> 11:36.400] [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[11:36.660 --> 11:43.120] [SPEAKER_12]: Well, last summer, some of our listeners may remember I was camping in Maine.
[11:43.700 --> 11:49.780] [SPEAKER_12]: And I was driving up some lonely highway, and I saw a barn off to the side of the road that said, Telephone Museum.
[11:50.240 --> 11:59.520] [SPEAKER_12]: And I had to jam on my brakes and do a quick speed new turn and go back and check out this telephone museum, which is really amazing.
[11:59.540 --> 12:01.900] [SPEAKER_12]: It's in Ellsworth, Maine, middle of nowhere.
[12:02.180 --> 12:18.240] [SPEAKER_12]: But it's a huge barn and associated buildings with entire central office telephone exchanges and all kinds of antique stuff going back to step-by-step, you know, straggler switches and antique phones.
[12:18.460 --> 12:20.120] [SPEAKER_12]: And it's an amazing place.
[12:20.120 --> 12:31.360] [SPEAKER_12]: But they're just rolling out a new display called, a new exhibit called The First Phone Phreaks, The First Hackers, Phone Preaks vs. Ma Bell, 1955 to 1975.
[12:36.300 --> 12:41.060] [SPEAKER_12]: And we have Phil Lapsley, who's written a book Exploding the Phone.
[12:41.200 --> 12:43.340] [SPEAKER_12]: He's been a speaker at Hope about phone phreaking.
[12:43.560 --> 12:45.400] [SPEAKER_12]: And we have several other gentlemen.
[12:45.400 --> 12:48.460] [SPEAKER_12]: And I'll introduce them when they come on the air here.
[12:48.660 --> 12:56.660] [SPEAKER_12]: But if you want, I can put you on hold and bring them... I'm going to call them to a conference bridge where they're waiting for us live from the Telephone Museum.
[12:56.800 --> 12:57.160] [SPEAKER_12]: Is that okay?
[12:57.500 --> 12:59.580] [SPEAKER_07]: That's perfectly fine.
[12:59.920 --> 12:59.940] [SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[12:59.940 --> 13:00.780] [SPEAKER_12]: I'll do that right now.
[13:00.880 --> 13:01.620] [SPEAKER_07]: Put us on hold.
[13:01.900 --> 13:04.020] [SPEAKER_07]: You get to have that power over us this time.
[13:05.260 --> 13:06.400] [SPEAKER_07]: Don't let it go to your head.
[13:06.840 --> 13:07.240] [SPEAKER_07]: All right.
[13:07.280 --> 13:07.560] [SPEAKER_07]: Hold on.
[13:07.760 --> 13:08.120] [SPEAKER_07]: All right.
[13:08.200 --> 13:08.820] [SPEAKER_07]: So you do that.
[13:08.940 --> 13:12.420] [SPEAKER_07]: And while you're finagling that, there's a couple other things going on this week.
[13:13.620 --> 13:24.680] [SPEAKER_07]: There was, of course, the terrible recent events in Orlando, which if you've been listening to this station, you've been hearing some of our other coverage of this here at WBAI.
[13:26.260 --> 13:39.320] [SPEAKER_07]: But this kind of ties in with something else we were talking about recently about people getting their Twitters hacked, their social media presences hijacked by activists and those seeking all sorts of expression.
[13:39.680 --> 13:48.180] [SPEAKER_07]: And in response to the events in Orlando, apparently this is a story on Newsweek, hackers have hijacked ISIS Twitter accounts.
[13:48.500 --> 14:00.240] [SPEAKER_07]: And when they gained access to these accounts, they then proceeded to fill them with admissions of homosexuality, gay porn, and things of that sort.
[14:00.240 --> 14:13.300] [SPEAKER_07]: I actually tried to send this story to our internal email list where we discuss the stories of the week and got notes back from a couple of people's workplace emails that such a thing was not accepted because of the subject line.
[14:13.880 --> 14:16.280] [SPEAKER_07]: But yeah, so that's been going on.
[14:16.460 --> 14:24.820] [SPEAKER_07]: And yeah, it hardly seems like anything in comparison to the scope of the events that have happened.
[14:24.820 --> 14:34.600] [SPEAKER_07]: But at the same time, it is it is kind of a it's a it's a little strike back from those who have certain skills and and decide to put them to use in this way.
[14:35.560 --> 14:39.520] [SPEAKER_12]: And yes, yes, Bernie, I have our guests on the line right now.
[14:39.980 --> 14:41.040] [SPEAKER_07]: Our guests are here.
[14:41.320 --> 14:41.580] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[14:41.740 --> 14:44.080] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes, we have before we get into that.
[14:45.440 --> 14:49.600] [SPEAKER_07]: We have been trying to get hold of Emmanuel and Kyle in parts unknown.
[14:49.880 --> 14:52.080] [SPEAKER_07]: But those those efforts have failed.
[14:52.260 --> 14:54.880] [SPEAKER_07]: But I do have their greetings to convey to our listeners.
[14:55.140 --> 14:58.420] [SPEAKER_07]: And I'm sure we'll be hearing all about their adventures on the next installment of this program.
[14:59.260 --> 15:01.960] [SPEAKER_07]: So, so moving on, Bernie, who have we got?
[15:02.340 --> 15:03.680] [SPEAKER_12]: We have Martin Harris.
[15:03.940 --> 15:07.500] [SPEAKER_12]: He's the board president of the Telephone Museum in Ellsworth, Maine.
[15:07.540 --> 15:09.060] [SPEAKER_12]: He also works at Princeton University.
[15:09.940 --> 15:11.820] [SPEAKER_12]: We have Charlie Dunn.
[15:12.760 --> 15:14.400] [SPEAKER_12]: He's one of the museum's founders.
[15:14.680 --> 15:15.680] [SPEAKER_12]: We have Chad Perkins.
[15:15.800 --> 15:17.480] [SPEAKER_12]: He's a board member and a board clerk.
[15:17.720 --> 15:20.200] [SPEAKER_12]: And we have Steve Tater, a board member.
[15:20.480 --> 15:31.260] [SPEAKER_12]: And last but not least, we have Phil Lapsley, a frequent hope speaker and author of the recent amazing book, Exploding the Phone, all about phone phreaks.
[15:31.440 --> 15:36.420] [SPEAKER_12]: And Martin, I understand there's a new exhibit being rolled out this week at the Telephone Museum, isn't there?
[15:37.840 --> 15:38.920] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, there is.
[15:39.100 --> 15:42.660] [SPEAKER_03]: The museum, the exhibit is called The First Hackers.
[15:43.240 --> 15:51.180] [SPEAKER_03]: And it traces some of the history of the original phone phreaks who started, I guess, in the late 50s or early 60s.
[15:51.920 --> 16:00.860] [SPEAKER_03]: And we have some exhibits that we've put together and to show some of the steps sort of through the history of what happened.
[16:01.020 --> 16:08.800] [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, I'm going to ask Steve Tater to talk a little bit about that because he's been the one that's been designing and coordinating everything.
[16:09.060 --> 16:13.500] [SPEAKER_03]: So, Steve, if you could maybe say a little bit about what we are showing here.
[16:13.900 --> 16:38.700] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, we attempt in our new exhibit to tell the story of a group of mostly young, curious, intelligent, mostly male people, some of whom were blind, who set out to explore the highways and byways of the world's largest machine, the Bell Systems Long Distance Network.
[16:39.960 --> 16:51.460] [SPEAKER_04]: The tale we tell explains how it came to pass that Bob Bell's engineers made this, made their task actually relatively easy to do.
[16:53.000 --> 16:57.660] [SPEAKER_04]: So, in our exhibit, the stations are laid out somewhat chronologically.
[16:58.160 --> 17:22.000] [SPEAKER_04]: So, we take visitors through the early days of electronic communications, operations, and then a segue to early automatic switching equipment, and arrive at the point where Bell's engineers made a failed choice that provided the keys that opened the doors for the hackers.
[17:23.380 --> 17:36.560] [SPEAKER_04]: So, in our exhibit, we covered blue boxes, 2,600 tricks, looparounds, and of course, we feature some of the prominent hackers and their achievements.
[17:36.940 --> 17:51.960] [SPEAKER_04]: And we have a number of interactive stations where visitors can explore first-hand blue boxing, looparounds, and things you can do with 2,600.
[17:52.660 --> 17:53.180] [SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
[17:53.260 --> 17:57.620] [SPEAKER_12]: So, this is not just a telephone museum.
[17:57.860 --> 18:00.460] [SPEAKER_12]: This is actually a phone phreaking museum now.
[18:00.460 --> 18:00.960] [SPEAKER_12]: Is that right?
[18:02.200 --> 18:06.580] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it is as far as our special event is concerned, yes.
[18:06.960 --> 18:07.340] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[18:09.140 --> 18:10.380] [SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing to me.
[18:10.740 --> 18:13.560] [SPEAKER_01]: Is it possible to actually play with some blue boxes?
[18:16.800 --> 18:18.940] [SPEAKER_03]: We have a little demonstration.
[18:19.320 --> 18:20.440] [SPEAKER_03]: It's not a
[18:25.750 --> 18:32.770] [SPEAKER_03]: pretty good simulation, and we allow people to try out and see what they can do, basically.
[18:33.150 --> 18:35.550] [SPEAKER_04]: If you have one, bring it in play.
[18:35.850 --> 18:36.030] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[18:36.770 --> 18:37.990] [SPEAKER_04]: Show us what you can do.
[18:38.190 --> 18:38.370] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[18:38.630 --> 18:38.950] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[18:39.250 --> 18:41.750] [SPEAKER_07]: We'll have to blow the dust off our old phone phreaking devices.
[18:41.750 --> 18:42.170] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[18:42.350 --> 18:42.630] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[18:42.710 --> 18:47.530] [SPEAKER_01]: I think it would be great, excuse me, to hear a 2,600 cycle tone.
[18:48.150 --> 18:48.350] [SPEAKER_01]: Excellent.
[18:48.810 --> 18:50.490] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going... I'm sorry.
[18:50.570 --> 18:50.950] [SPEAKER_01]: Go ahead, Bernie.
[18:51.250 --> 19:02.350] [SPEAKER_12]: I was going to say, Phil, I understand you're in California right now, but you're heading out to Ellsworth, Maine, to the telephone museum tomorrow morning, right, to be there for the unveiling of this new exhibit there?
[19:03.170 --> 19:04.730] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's exactly right, Bernie.
[19:04.910 --> 19:14.450] [SPEAKER_05]: I'm actually hopping on a red-eye in a few hours, and I'll be flying out and get in tomorrow morning, and I'm really looking forward to the opening of this exhibit.
[19:14.950 --> 19:16.290] [SPEAKER_05]: It sounds really cool.
[19:16.830 --> 19:25.450] [SPEAKER_05]: A few minutes ago, before we got on the radio, I was getting to hear some of the stuff that these guys have planned, and it's just amazing.
[19:25.650 --> 19:27.850] [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, this is going to be a cool exhibit.
[19:28.330 --> 19:32.210] [SPEAKER_12]: Phil, what was your role in making this exhibit happen?
[19:33.630 --> 19:39.030] [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, like the best things in life, I didn't have to do very much.
[19:39.130 --> 19:40.050] [SPEAKER_05]: They did all the work.
[19:40.690 --> 19:48.870] [SPEAKER_05]: You know, Steve contacted me a little bit out of the blue and said, hey, we want to do this exhibit, and could I help out a little bit?
[19:49.010 --> 19:55.890] [SPEAKER_05]: Mostly, I ended up just contributing a few things, a few artifacts that I had, some old memos.
[19:56.310 --> 20:00.910] [SPEAKER_05]: I believe I sent them a blue box, and a few other things.
[20:01.110 --> 20:03.590] [SPEAKER_05]: And so I contributed a few things to the exhibit.
[20:03.870 --> 20:06.950] [SPEAKER_05]: But again, it's really all their work.
[20:07.610 --> 20:08.050] Wow.
[20:08.670 --> 20:09.430] [SPEAKER_05]: Excellent, excellent.
[20:09.890 --> 20:30.690] [SPEAKER_12]: And Rob, I think we have some... they're going to do some live demonstrations of some things from the step-by-step switches, crossbar number three, number five crossbars, and some blue box sounds.
[20:30.930 --> 20:33.730] [SPEAKER_12]: Do we want to move ahead with that now, or do we have any more questions for you guys?
[20:33.750 --> 20:35.150] [SPEAKER_01]: I've got a quick question.
[20:35.830 --> 20:47.030] [SPEAKER_01]: Bernie, you were a little cryptic with the location of Ellsworth, so I'm wondering if they could give us a bit more of a read on exactly where that is in Maine, and is it close to Portland?
[20:47.030 --> 20:48.390] [SPEAKER_01]: Is it close to Bangor?
[20:48.750 --> 20:52.310] [SPEAKER_01]: We know it's somewhere in the vast range of the 207, right?
[20:53.710 --> 20:56.570] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, we are in the vast range of 207.
[20:57.010 --> 20:59.030] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we are located in Ellsworth, Maine.
[20:59.810 --> 21:05.090] [SPEAKER_03]: We are sort of midway between Bar Harbor and Bangor, actually.
[21:06.050 --> 21:09.390] [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, it's a pretty big tourist area.
[21:09.530 --> 21:14.390] [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people come up to go to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island and that area.
[21:15.270 --> 21:19.230] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's quite a way up in Maine, sadly.
[21:19.590 --> 21:21.710] [SPEAKER_03]: But we have a really great location here.
[21:21.790 --> 21:24.310] [SPEAKER_03]: We have a good facility and there's plenty of space.
[21:25.210 --> 21:27.370] [SPEAKER_04]: And we think it's a good place to be.
[21:27.550 --> 21:27.850] [SPEAKER_01]: Excellent.
[21:28.110 --> 21:36.690] [SPEAKER_04]: We are conveniently located right off 1A, which is the main road between Bangor and Bar Harbor.
[21:36.870 --> 21:36.970] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[21:37.450 --> 21:37.730] [SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[21:37.930 --> 21:44.990] [SPEAKER_07]: So, um, we can, uh, if we can move on to hearing some of these cool sounds you've got for us, and then after that we'll talk a little bit about what we've, uh, what we've heard.
[21:47.370 --> 21:47.970] [SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
[21:48.410 --> 21:55.730] [SPEAKER_03]: So, um, we're all kind of standing around now in, uh, one of the aisles of our number five crossbar system.
[21:56.650 --> 22:03.590] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, so the number five crossbar was designed at Bell Labs, uh, right after the second world war.
[22:04.590 --> 22:11.550] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, uh, it was designed basically to, uh, uh, to meet the needs of the growing suburban communities.
[22:11.730 --> 22:14.830] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, the, uh, the veterans came back from war.
[22:14.910 --> 22:16.790] [SPEAKER_03]: They all settled down in the suburbs.
[22:17.390 --> 22:23.050] [SPEAKER_03]: And the Bell Labs need system needed a switching system that could accommodate this rapidly growing population.
[22:23.770 --> 22:35.790] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, and because of that, the number five crossbar has a number of firsts in particular, um, it was the first system that could really by itself do, uh, automated billing of toll calls.
[22:35.910 --> 22:37.450] [SPEAKER_03]: So you didn't need an operator anymore.
[22:38.330 --> 22:49.470] [SPEAKER_03]: And in fact, the first, uh, installation of that was in 1951 in New Jersey, where, uh, they allowed people to dial really across the country, dial themselves without having to go to an operator.
[22:49.730 --> 22:58.070] [SPEAKER_07]: And, and before, uh, before we hear this, uh, how would you describe, uh, where you are in this system for those who have never seen anything like it or have no idea who it, how, what it looks like?
[22:58.230 --> 23:05.930] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's, uh, where I'm surrounded by, I think about 10, 11 foot six, yeah, 11 foot six base equipment.
[23:06.130 --> 23:06.890] [SPEAKER_03]: It's really tall.
[23:07.570 --> 23:11.910] [SPEAKER_03]: And each of those bays is, uh, it's really full of relays.
[23:12.970 --> 23:14.990] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, and, uh, and crossbar switches.
[23:16.010 --> 23:24.270] [SPEAKER_03]: Um, it's, uh, it's, I guess kind of hard to describe if you've, if you've never seen anything like that, but you can go online and look for pictures of crossbar switches.
[23:24.270 --> 23:30.630] [SPEAKER_03]: And if you, uh, if you search number five crossbar, there's certainly some pictures on the web that you can look at.
[23:31.090 --> 23:33.830] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, we're, we're sort of right in the middle of it here.
[23:35.110 --> 23:39.930] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, the, the piece of equipment that's directly in front of us is called the marker.
[23:40.930 --> 23:44.290] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, the reason it's called the marker is kind of historical.
[23:44.510 --> 23:46.590] [SPEAKER_03]: But really what it is, it's the brains of the system.
[23:47.310 --> 23:54.010] [SPEAKER_03]: It's, if you like, it's like a, uh, a relay-based computer because it controls the setup of all the calls.
[23:55.370 --> 23:59.010] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, it's got a lot of relays in it, so it makes a lot of noise when it operates.
[23:59.190 --> 24:01.670] [SPEAKER_03]: And hopefully we'll be able to demonstrate that in a minute.
[24:01.930 --> 24:02.470] [SPEAKER_07]: Please do.
[24:02.690 --> 24:05.610] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, but, uh, as I say, it's really the brain of the thing.
[24:05.770 --> 24:10.410] [SPEAKER_03]: It, it has its fingers around all the other pieces of equipment in the system and it controls them.
[24:10.810 --> 24:16.190] [SPEAKER_03]: So whenever you make a call, that's the thing that's actually doing the hard work and figuring out how to route your call.
[24:17.470 --> 24:17.910] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[24:19.050 --> 24:21.810] [SPEAKER_12]: Well, should we make, should we make a call now and see how it works?
[24:22.270 --> 24:23.070] [SPEAKER_12]: Hear how it works?
[24:23.890 --> 24:24.330] [SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
[24:24.550 --> 24:32.190] [SPEAKER_03]: So what I'm going to do, I'm going to make a local call, uh, to another phone that's connected to the same switch.
[24:33.310 --> 24:37.630] [SPEAKER_03]: And, um, what you'll hear first of all is you'll hear some pulsing.
[24:37.770 --> 24:44.630] [SPEAKER_03]: It's, uh, the phone I'm using, it's actually a dial-based butt set, uh, plugged into a test line here.
[24:45.410 --> 24:55.690] [SPEAKER_03]: And as I dial the call, you'll hear, hopefully you will hear, because Charlie is doing a absolutely stalwart job of holding the speakerphone right up to the relays.
[24:56.850 --> 25:00.190] [SPEAKER_03]: So you'll hear the relays, uh, clatter as I dial the call.
[25:00.750 --> 25:06.290] [SPEAKER_03]: And then after I dial the very last digit, uh, there'll be a big sort of wall of noise.
[25:06.690 --> 25:10.370] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's going to be the relays of the marker that are actually switching the call through.
[25:11.290 --> 25:17.490] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, we have a phone that's at the other end of the building, which you may or may not hear ringing, uh, after the call is set up.
[25:18.410 --> 25:19.850] [SPEAKER_03]: So, uh, so here we go.
[25:20.710 --> 25:22.690] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, I'm going to start dialing right now.
[25:43.540 --> 25:44.480] [SPEAKER_12]: I heard ringing.
[25:47.400 --> 25:47.800] [SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[25:48.040 --> 25:50.760] [SPEAKER_03]: That was the, uh, I'll release the call now.
[25:50.900 --> 25:54.360] [SPEAKER_03]: But that was the, uh, that was the ringback from the phone that we just called.
[25:54.720 --> 25:58.540] [SPEAKER_03]: Um, I hope that everybody managed to hear the noises, uh, okay.
[25:58.960 --> 26:00.300] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, I think it sounded good.
[26:00.600 --> 26:04.480] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, uh, I know we, we tried to fulfill earlier, and it sounded pretty good.
[26:04.580 --> 26:06.400] [SPEAKER_03]: So hopefully it came through okay over the radio.
[26:06.900 --> 26:07.960] [SPEAKER_07]: It came through pretty good.
[26:08.140 --> 26:11.860] [SPEAKER_07]: Uh, we heard, uh, I think we heard clicks that are consistent with pulse dialing.
[26:12.140 --> 26:12.860] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, is that correct?
[26:13.780 --> 26:14.140] [SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[26:14.440 --> 26:14.760] [SPEAKER_03]: You would.
[26:15.640 --> 26:29.460] [SPEAKER_03]: So, um, so the next little demonstration we're going to do is we're going to make a call from our, uh, number five crossbar, uh, uh, to our number three crossbar switch.
[26:29.780 --> 26:36.360] [SPEAKER_03]: And because these, uh, both crossbar systems, uh, we can set up an MF trunk to do that.
[26:37.580 --> 26:42.040] [SPEAKER_03]: And, um, I have a monitor plugged into the trunk here.
[26:42.240 --> 26:46.380] [SPEAKER_03]: So you, hopefully you will hear the MF tones that are going by.
[26:46.820 --> 26:53.260] [SPEAKER_03]: Um, it's, it's not going to be very long because this is the, this is the call that terminates in our number three crossbar.
[26:53.860 --> 26:56.420] [SPEAKER_03]: So only four digits need to be sent.
[26:56.640 --> 27:00.160] [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but hopefully you'll get to hear it.
[27:00.300 --> 27:04.300] [SPEAKER_03]: So, um, what's going to happen is I'm going to go off hook again.
[27:04.480 --> 27:05.400] [SPEAKER_03]: I will dial the number.
[27:06.220 --> 27:10.840] [SPEAKER_03]: And then you may hear some, uh, some cladders of the marker operating.
[27:11.220 --> 27:17.320] [SPEAKER_03]: And then there will be some MF tones, uh, coming over that hopefully will make it over the radio.
[27:17.660 --> 27:18.280] [SPEAKER_03]: So here we go.
[27:18.360 --> 27:18.980] [SPEAKER_03]: Let's try this.
[27:44.370 --> 27:44.770] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[27:44.770 --> 27:49.850] [SPEAKER_03]: So what you heard there was, uh, the MF being sent from the five crossbar to the three crossbar.
[27:50.010 --> 27:53.130] [SPEAKER_03]: And shortly after that, uh, you heard the phone ringing.
[27:53.310 --> 27:56.610] [SPEAKER_03]: That's the phone on our three crossbar that, uh, that we made the call to.
[27:56.790 --> 27:58.470] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, hopefully that came through.
[27:58.470 --> 27:58.830] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[27:58.830 --> 28:07.610] [SPEAKER_05]: What, what you didn't hear there is, uh, is, uh, is my, uh, ear to ear smile having, because it's really quite nice hearing MF tones.
[28:07.770 --> 28:12.010] [SPEAKER_05]: I didn't think I was ever going to hear those again, actually used in a real switching system in my lifetime.
[28:12.290 --> 28:12.850] [SPEAKER_05]: That's awesome.
[28:13.190 --> 28:13.590] [SPEAKER_05]: Absolutely.
[28:14.410 --> 28:17.350] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm half expecting Emmanuel to pick up the phone when it's ringing.
[28:20.210 --> 28:20.610] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[28:20.850 --> 28:28.610] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, so this is, this is, uh, I think accurately described as, uh, when you made phone calls back when these, uh, systems were, um, deroguer.
[28:28.870 --> 28:35.850] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, this is what was going on at the telephone company's facilities that would, uh, that would allow your call to go through.
[28:37.090 --> 28:37.630] [SPEAKER_12]: All right.
[28:38.250 --> 28:44.330] [SPEAKER_12]: Now, I understand you have an old, uh, step-by-step, step-by-step, uh, demonstration set up there too, doesn't it?
[28:45.210 --> 28:45.610] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[28:45.770 --> 28:50.790] [SPEAKER_03]: So what we're going to do is, um, we're going to put this, uh, speakerphone on mute in just a second.
[28:50.990 --> 28:53.530] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, maybe you can chat with Phil for a bit.
[28:53.870 --> 29:01.350] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, we have to move it over to the other side of our, uh, exhibit area, and then we'll come back on again and we'll make some calls on the step-by-step.
[29:01.770 --> 29:02.210] [SPEAKER_05]: Sure thing.
[29:03.030 --> 29:05.150] [SPEAKER_12]: Phil, have you been to the telephone museum before?
[29:06.190 --> 29:06.910] [SPEAKER_05]: I've not.
[29:07.090 --> 29:12.890] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh, and I'm, I'm really looking forward to it because I think, you know, it's funny, uh, it's a little bit of a misnomer, right?
[29:12.970 --> 29:16.830] [SPEAKER_05]: Because it's not just the telephone museum, it's the telephone switching museum.
[29:16.830 --> 29:30.150] [SPEAKER_05]: And that, I think is just what's so amazingly cool about it is, is the idea that you actually get to see, you know, not just the, not just a bunch of phones on static display, but you actually get to see the switching equipment that, that made them ring and allowed you to talk on them.
[29:30.550 --> 29:38.850] [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I think I joked with Chad when I was out there last summer that they could call it a telephony museum, but then people might see it as a phony museum.
[29:39.310 --> 29:40.430] [SPEAKER_05]: So, yes, indeed.
[29:41.790 --> 29:43.930] [SPEAKER_12]: But it is indeed a telephony museum.
[29:45.510 --> 29:45.910] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[29:45.910 --> 29:53.830] [SPEAKER_07]: Now, Phil, uh, you've, uh, our, our listeners might, uh, know you as, as the writer of Exploding the Phone, um, a fantastic book on the history of phone phreaking.
[29:54.350 --> 29:59.570] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, did that, uh, did that predate or prompt your history, your interest in the hardware end of it?
[30:01.630 --> 30:06.310] [SPEAKER_05]: Uh, did the, the, you're saying, did the book cause my, the interest in the hardware?
[30:06.630 --> 30:06.970] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[30:07.090 --> 30:08.270] [SPEAKER_07]: Or, or were you already into it?
[30:09.010 --> 30:10.130] [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, no, no, definitely.
[30:10.330 --> 30:13.550] [SPEAKER_05]: I was, I was, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm an electrical engineer by training.
[30:13.950 --> 30:18.050] [SPEAKER_05]: And, uh, you know, I've been playing with phones since I was about probably eight or nine years old.
[30:18.530 --> 30:23.150] [SPEAKER_05]: So, um, so, you know, this is something I've, I've been interested in for, for quite a while.
[30:23.750 --> 30:24.750] [SPEAKER_05]: So, excellent.
[30:24.870 --> 30:31.250] [SPEAKER_07]: So when, when these guys came up with the, uh, came up with their telephony museum or their telephone switching museum, um, it was right up your alley.
[30:32.570 --> 30:32.930] [SPEAKER_05]: Absolutely.
[30:33.330 --> 30:33.810] [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no.
[30:33.910 --> 30:47.430] [SPEAKER_05]: And this is, this is, uh, and I think, you know, again, the, the ability to actually, to actually like take a blue box and actually play with it on, on the actual switching equipment that it was originally used on, I think it's just such an awesome idea,
[30:47.590 --> 30:47.730] [SPEAKER_05]: right?
[30:47.750 --> 30:50.030] [SPEAKER_05]: It really should, should make everything come alive.
[30:51.170 --> 30:51.530] [SPEAKER_07]: Indeed.
[30:51.750 --> 30:56.250] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, I think even just these sounds on the radio are making it come alive in a, in ways that we haven't managed yet.
[30:56.410 --> 30:56.910] [SPEAKER_07]: Uh, Alex.
[30:57.170 --> 30:57.430] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[30:58.130 --> 31:00.330] [SPEAKER_01]: I have, uh, oh, very good.
[31:00.410 --> 31:00.710] [SPEAKER_01]: Very good.
[31:00.790 --> 31:05.790] [SPEAKER_01]: I was just about to say, gents, I have a, I, I, I'm so fascinated by this.
[31:05.870 --> 31:22.450] [SPEAKER_01]: I have very, very fond memories of being a young teenager and, uh, staring in the windows of the Ronkonkoma 5 ESS switching station with, uh, some friends and now colleagues these days and, uh, just trying to get a glimpse, excuse me, of, of what was going on inside.
[31:22.790 --> 31:23.810] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so fascinated.
[31:23.990 --> 31:25.490] [SPEAKER_01]: I, I can't wait to get up to Maine and visit.
[31:26.950 --> 31:27.390] [SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely.
[31:27.830 --> 31:31.570] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, where, where can, uh, one find more information on the, on the telephone museum?
[31:33.110 --> 31:34.550] [SPEAKER_07]: If one were, if one were interested.
[31:34.550 --> 31:38.370] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, you can, uh, certainly visit us, uh, at our website.
[31:39.130 --> 31:49.370] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, or, uh, you could, uh, uh, people can also, uh, call us, uh, uh, uh, we are, we have a, a number that we answer when we're here.
[31:50.010 --> 31:54.830] [SPEAKER_04]: Um, so it's, uh, the telephone museum dot org, right?
[31:55.190 --> 31:56.490] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, that's, that's very simple.
[31:57.170 --> 31:59.350] [SPEAKER_04]: No-lock contact information is on the website.
[31:59.590 --> 32:00.830] [SPEAKER_07]: Telephone museum dot org.
[32:00.970 --> 32:00.970] Excellent.
[32:00.970 --> 32:01.730] [SPEAKER_07]: On Facebook too.
[32:02.410 --> 32:02.450] Excellent.
[32:03.330 --> 32:07.930] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, I have a quick question for, uh, uh, I'll, I'll put, I'll put this to Charlie as one of the founders.
[32:08.270 --> 32:10.070] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, how did, how did this whole thing get started?
[32:12.450 --> 32:25.630] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, well, you know, I'm one of these, one of these people that was interested in phones when I was a kid too, taking them apart, following the phone men around whenever they appeared, looking in the windows of the central office, just like you guys.
[32:26.350 --> 32:30.810] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and then when I was in high school actually going into central offices.
[32:31.910 --> 32:40.890] [SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, I guess it came to, you know, came to like the late seventies, um, and they were going to break up the bell system, right?
[32:40.990 --> 32:42.430] [SPEAKER_02]: We all kind of knew that was going to happen.
[32:43.610 --> 32:47.170] [SPEAKER_02]: So, this really cool equipment, that's the way I can describe it.
[32:47.230 --> 32:51.470] [SPEAKER_02]: I always just liked the equipment and the sounds and everything about it, the way it was made, the way it looked.
[32:52.270 --> 32:54.510] [SPEAKER_02]: We all, we knew it was all going to go away pretty fast.
[32:55.290 --> 33:00.150] [SPEAKER_02]: And we, uh, three of us actually said, we're going to do something to try and save some of it.
[33:00.930 --> 33:04.090] [SPEAKER_02]: And you, you know how immense this stuff is and how much of it there was.
[33:04.290 --> 33:07.430] [SPEAKER_02]: So, so that's how the museum got started.
[33:07.430 --> 33:08.770] [SPEAKER_02]: We started in the Boston area.
[33:09.890 --> 33:12.070] [SPEAKER_02]: I met the owner of this piece of property.
[33:12.250 --> 33:12.990] [SPEAKER_02]: That's Charles Galley.
[33:13.110 --> 33:14.010] [SPEAKER_02]: He's not here with us tonight.
[33:14.190 --> 33:16.070] [SPEAKER_02]: And he said, well, I've got all this land.
[33:16.170 --> 33:16.810] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got a building.
[33:17.850 --> 33:20.590] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, why don't we have the museum there?
[33:21.470 --> 33:23.130] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how it happened.
[33:23.130 --> 33:28.830] [SPEAKER_02]: And, and, uh, we started collecting, switching from New England to all at the time and independence.
[33:29.150 --> 33:31.370] [SPEAKER_02]: And so we're here.
[33:32.930 --> 33:33.410] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[33:35.610 --> 33:36.730] [SPEAKER_07]: There's a familiar sound.
[33:37.150 --> 33:38.110] [SPEAKER_12]: That's a real phone call.
[33:38.210 --> 33:39.230] [SPEAKER_02]: We're getting a real phone call.
[33:39.530 --> 33:48.930] [SPEAKER_12]: So I just wanted to remind our listeners, it's the, the web, the web URL is the telephone museum.org, the telephone museum.org.
[33:49.090 --> 33:51.950] [SPEAKER_12]: And what is your telephone number up there at the telephone museum?
[33:55.230 --> 33:57.990] [SPEAKER_02]: 207-667-9491.
[33:59.370 --> 33:59.790] [SPEAKER_12]: Okay.
[34:00.250 --> 34:00.750] [SPEAKER_12]: That's great.
[34:00.830 --> 34:01.970] [SPEAKER_12]: Our listeners might be calling.
[34:02.090 --> 34:03.290] [SPEAKER_12]: I hope they don't call during the show.
[34:05.630 --> 34:07.930] [SPEAKER_02]: I think one of them just did, actually.
[34:08.650 --> 34:09.330] [SPEAKER_12]: Oh, okay.
[34:10.170 --> 34:12.870] [SPEAKER_02]: That was a problem putting phone numbers out over the air.
[34:13.750 --> 34:14.530] [SPEAKER_01]: This library.
[34:14.750 --> 34:17.410] [SPEAKER_12]: Well, they got to, they got to hear their own, uh, hear their, their call range.
[34:17.410 --> 34:20.110] [SPEAKER_12]: So what, what next do we have to, uh, to listen to?
[34:21.850 --> 34:24.470] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, we've got a stop-by-step system here.
[34:28.490 --> 34:30.130] [SPEAKER_03]: And my cell phone is now ringing.
[34:30.230 --> 34:31.490] [SPEAKER_03]: This is live radio, folks.
[34:33.730 --> 34:35.090] [SPEAKER_07]: You know, we love it.
[34:35.590 --> 34:38.090] [SPEAKER_03]: So, uh, yeah, we have a step-by-step system here.
[34:38.230 --> 34:42.510] [SPEAKER_03]: It's actually a Western Electric, uh, 740, 740 PBX.
[34:43.230 --> 34:45.390] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's just, uh, it's a small system.
[34:45.590 --> 34:47.410] [SPEAKER_03]: It's just two digits that we have to dial.
[34:47.570 --> 34:56.510] [SPEAKER_03]: But, um, I'm going to go pick up a phone and you'll hear some noise, um, while the phone is connected to a, uh, uh, switching equipment.
[34:56.710 --> 34:57.950] [SPEAKER_03]: And then I'm going to dial some numbers.
[34:58.110 --> 34:59.390] [SPEAKER_03]: And then you should hear another phone ring.
[34:59.570 --> 35:00.970] [SPEAKER_03]: So let's try that right now.
[35:24.740 --> 35:26.680] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, hopefully that came through okay.
[35:27.240 --> 35:32.000] [SPEAKER_03]: Um, it, uh, was that, was that clear to everybody that, uh, that's on the call here?
[35:32.240 --> 35:36.000] [SPEAKER_12]: We couldn't hear it really, really well, but we got, maybe we got the gist of it.
[35:36.900 --> 35:37.080] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[35:38.540 --> 35:41.340] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, unfortunately this is not a very large system that we have here.
[35:41.500 --> 35:47.160] [SPEAKER_03]: It's, uh, the most convenient one to, uh, uh, demonstrate on, on the, uh, on the speaker phone right now.
[35:47.540 --> 35:48.320] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh...
[35:48.320 --> 35:51.360] [SPEAKER_12]: But when you're, when you're up there in person, it's, it's loud and clear.
[35:52.560 --> 35:54.060] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, most definitely, yes.
[35:54.240 --> 35:57.240] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, not only that, of course, but you can see everything actually happened.
[35:57.360 --> 36:01.420] [SPEAKER_03]: You can actually watch the movement as well as, uh, uh, and hear it.
[36:02.040 --> 36:02.520] [SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely.
[36:02.820 --> 36:07.760] [SPEAKER_07]: And it's probably still, it's probably still very large in the scheme of, uh, crossbar systems that are currently running.
[36:09.260 --> 36:12.020] [SPEAKER_12]: So you have an ANAC, uh, system up there, don't you?
[36:13.460 --> 36:14.280] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, we do.
[36:15.300 --> 36:17.700] [SPEAKER_12]: Um, and that's connected to the number three crossbar.
[36:18.340 --> 36:20.220] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're going to go into the number three now.
[36:21.080 --> 36:25.640] [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to have to, we're going to mute the phone, just in case you're tripped, but you want to hear any prohibited words.
[36:26.860 --> 36:27.260] [SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely.
[36:27.620 --> 36:35.660] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, so who knows, uh, who knows what crossbar means, what crossbar refers to in the, in the context of a crossbar system?
[36:38.660 --> 36:41.740] [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I mean, I know what a crossbar switch looks like.
[36:41.740 --> 36:58.840] [SPEAKER_12]: I've physically touched them and actually used to have a, uh, a piece of a crossbar switch years ago, but it's, uh, uh, basically, uh, a bunch of fine wires that, uh, that, uh, are unlike a, I can't really describe the electromechanical arrangement, but it's,
[36:58.940 --> 37:04.940] [SPEAKER_12]: uh, it's a bunch of horizontal wires and then a bunch of vertical wires that lift up and down and touch against the horizontal wires.
[37:05.780 --> 37:15.560] [SPEAKER_12]: And, um, um, it's, it's basically instead of relays, it's a, it's a more compact way of, of doing switching than, than a whole bunch of big relays.
[37:15.880 --> 37:16.220] [SPEAKER_07]: Mm-hmm.
[37:16.380 --> 37:21.960] [SPEAKER_07]: The, the key being that it is an electromechanical system for, uh, for those who might not be familiar with the distinction.
[37:22.320 --> 37:31.860] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, that means instead of, uh, printed circuit boards and, uh, you know, transistors and solid state stuff, there are actually things moving and touching wires to one another to make all this happen.
[37:32.980 --> 37:34.840] [SPEAKER_12]: Hey, they're back in the number three crossbar.
[37:35.520 --> 37:36.680] [SPEAKER_02]: We are in number three.
[37:37.840 --> 37:40.960] [SPEAKER_02]: Can you hear the interrupters going ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk?
[37:41.060 --> 37:44.760] [SPEAKER_02]: That's like the drum, the drum guy, keeping the, uh, keeping the beat?
[37:46.340 --> 37:46.900] [SPEAKER_07]: We doing it?
[37:46.920 --> 37:47.180] [SPEAKER_07]: Oh, yeah.
[37:48.960 --> 37:49.360] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[37:51.680 --> 37:56.820] [SPEAKER_03]: All right, so we're gonna, we're gonna try and make a call into our ANAC machine.
[37:57.360 --> 38:03.060] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, ANAC, A-N-A-C, stands for Automatic Number Announcing Circuit.
[38:03.740 --> 38:13.120] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a, uh, it's a device that the, the technicians would use to figure out, uh, what telephone number was on a particular line.
[38:13.340 --> 38:20.040] [SPEAKER_03]: And they would dial a code, and the machine, uh, would read back the number that was associated with that telephone line.
[38:21.160 --> 38:24.680] [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, so let's, let's go off-hook and dial the number.
[38:25.320 --> 38:26.420] [SPEAKER_03]: This is Ray on the test stand.
[38:35.920 --> 38:40.600] [SPEAKER_12]: Three, two, seven, nine, nine, eight, five.
[38:43.600 --> 38:53.240] [SPEAKER_03]: So what you actually heard there was the, uh, uh, the, uh, the crossbar system was communicating, uh, with our ANAC machine by MF.
[38:53.380 --> 38:56.060] [SPEAKER_03]: So that was that very long MF string that you heard there.
[38:56.480 --> 39:06.060] [SPEAKER_03]: And the ANAC machine would take the MF, which contains the number that you're calling from, and, uh, turns it into a, a speech, into a voice.
[39:06.060 --> 39:11.760] [SPEAKER_12]: Now, was that a digitally stored, uh, uh, voice file, or, or how, how was that played?
[39:13.220 --> 39:17.840] [SPEAKER_03]: Um, yeah, it's a, um, it's a, it's a, it's a digital voice.
[39:18.060 --> 39:28.180] [SPEAKER_03]: It's, uh, I think it's a unit with a microprocessor, and the different numbers are stored in digital format, and it converts them back into analog, and sends them out over the telephone line.
[39:28.740 --> 39:30.780] [SPEAKER_03]: And the microprocessor...
[39:31.680 --> 39:35.740] [SPEAKER_12]: But there was ANAC before, before, um, microprocessors.
[39:35.740 --> 39:37.100] [SPEAKER_12]: There was ANAC, wasn't there?
[39:37.160 --> 39:37.760] [SPEAKER_12]: How did that work?
[39:37.880 --> 39:38.640] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure was, yeah.
[39:38.840 --> 39:49.580] [SPEAKER_02]: Yep, um, there was an, there was an early version of it that used rotating drums with film, but a light shone through, that, uh, photocells picked up each digit, and then later on, there's ones with magnetic drums.
[39:50.300 --> 39:57.260] [SPEAKER_02]: So, we have the kind of modern, small, easy-to-install one, instead of the one that takes up six feet of height and two feet wide.
[39:57.300 --> 40:04.640] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I did actually see one of the older ones at the weekend, visited somebody after the telephone show, and he has one of those in his basement.
[40:04.640 --> 40:06.400] [SPEAKER_03]: So, always fun.
[40:07.360 --> 40:19.780] [SPEAKER_01]: So, gentlemen, would this be the, the, the precursor to, in the NYNEX and, and New York telephone days, used to be the, you know, you would pick up the phone and dial on 958, and it would spit back the, the number for you?
[40:21.040 --> 40:22.580] That's exactly what it is, yes.
[40:22.780 --> 40:23.000] [SPEAKER_01]: Gotcha.
[40:23.200 --> 40:24.280] [SPEAKER_03]: That's exactly the machine it is.
[40:25.540 --> 40:27.460] [SPEAKER_01]: Does that actually still work on a landline?
[40:27.580 --> 40:29.100] [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't tried that in, in years.
[40:29.340 --> 40:30.040] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[40:30.280 --> 40:31.420] [SPEAKER_02]: It works where I live.
[40:31.420 --> 40:31.900] [SPEAKER_02]: It does.
[40:32.040 --> 40:39.600] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they keep changing the codes around because they don't want the rest of us using the codes, but, you know, it's so secret.
[40:40.020 --> 40:40.240] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[40:40.500 --> 40:41.020] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[40:41.280 --> 40:41.960] [SPEAKER_01]: And can I ask you a question?
[40:42.100 --> 40:49.260] [SPEAKER_01]: The, the number that you, that the ANAC spit back was a 9985, which sounds to me like it might be a telco phone number, because 99XX...
[40:49.260 --> 40:51.360] [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the telco office internal phone numbers.
[40:51.500 --> 40:52.800] [SPEAKER_01]: Ah, so that's what it is.
[40:52.980 --> 40:53.680] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, gotcha.
[40:53.840 --> 40:55.120] It's one of the test stuff, a test...
[40:55.120 --> 40:56.320] [SPEAKER_07]: It's a test line, right.
[40:56.380 --> 40:56.500] [SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[40:56.800 --> 40:57.000] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[40:57.140 --> 41:04.420] [SPEAKER_07]: Listen to all this from our Off The Hook studio audience, Jim, just held up a sign saying road trip, which I think we all agree heartily.
[41:04.500 --> 41:04.960] [SPEAKER_07]: No question.
[41:05.540 --> 41:08.520] [SPEAKER_12]: So, you're going to make a local call now on the number three crossbar?
[41:09.360 --> 41:11.780] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're going to go down into that midst of the markers.
[41:12.680 --> 41:15.760] [SPEAKER_02]: They're not as big and impressive as the markers in the number five.
[41:15.920 --> 41:19.600] [SPEAKER_02]: They're only about four feet high each, but there's two of them, and I'm going to go right into the middle of them.
[41:20.200 --> 41:21.560] [SPEAKER_02]: And then, we're going to do a call.
[41:22.600 --> 41:26.540] [SPEAKER_02]: You'll hear one of the MF senders, actually, or DP sender, file pulse.
[41:27.240 --> 41:28.360] [SPEAKER_02]: We'll explain that in a minute.
[42:12.640 --> 42:21.900] [SPEAKER_03]: So, what you heard there was we made a call from our number three crossbar out to one of the other switches we have here on the property.
[42:23.520 --> 42:28.220] [SPEAKER_03]: So, that particular switch, it's called a CX100, and it's just got relays.
[42:28.360 --> 42:31.900] [SPEAKER_03]: There are no two motion selectors.
[42:32.100 --> 42:33.080] [SPEAKER_03]: There's no crossbar switches.
[42:33.220 --> 42:35.480] [SPEAKER_03]: Everything on that system is done by relays.
[42:36.880 --> 42:42.320] [SPEAKER_03]: And there's actually a very interesting story connected with that switch, which I'll, at least for now, skip over.
[42:42.320 --> 42:45.880] [SPEAKER_03]: So, that particular machine only accepts dial pulses.
[42:46.740 --> 42:50.900] [SPEAKER_03]: So, the number three crossbar has to generate dial pulses to send calls there.
[42:51.540 --> 43:06.120] [SPEAKER_03]: And what you heard at one point during the call, the sort of the rattling, is the best way I can describe it, was the dial pulse sender dialing the number into the French bureau CO there for the number we were trying to reach.
[43:08.240 --> 43:14.940] [SPEAKER_01]: It sounded to me like there was a train and a centipede and then a cricket, actually.
[43:17.500 --> 43:18.060] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[43:18.280 --> 43:42.760] [SPEAKER_12]: These are sounds from telephone history being resurrected and shared with our radio audience, and I'm really... I'm having a lot of fun visually imagining all the physical gyrations that you gentlemen up there in Maine had to do with like bringing telephones around and holding the speakerphone up in the air to catch these sounds so they can go out over the air to the... from the top of the Empire
[43:42.760 --> 43:45.600] [SPEAKER_12]: State Building to the listeners of WBAI.
[43:45.720 --> 43:48.760] [SPEAKER_12]: I really want to express our thanks for you doing that.
[43:49.440 --> 43:50.600] [SPEAKER_12]: We'd like you to stay on the phone.
[43:50.680 --> 43:57.340] [SPEAKER_12]: Maybe we can take some listener calls, but before we do, I know this is a labor of love there and it's pretty much all volunteers.
[43:57.660 --> 43:59.040] [SPEAKER_12]: How do you keep this thing running?
[43:59.140 --> 43:59.960] [SPEAKER_12]: Do you take donations?
[44:00.220 --> 44:04.040] [SPEAKER_12]: And if somebody wanted to help keep this museum alive, how could they donate money?
[44:05.720 --> 44:10.580] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, that's a very welcome topic that you just brought up.
[44:10.760 --> 44:11.780] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you very much.
[44:12.820 --> 44:33.040] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, we are an all-volunteer organization and it does cost a little bit every year to operate a place, everything from electricity to heat and keeping the grass costs and all of those sorts of things.
[44:33.280 --> 44:40.300] [SPEAKER_04]: And then, of course, we do have educational outreach and we want to keep creating interesting exhibits.
[44:40.600 --> 44:46.000] [SPEAKER_04]: So there's always the need for donations, which we gladly accept.
[44:46.300 --> 44:50.720] [SPEAKER_04]: So if you'd like to do that, you have several choices.
[44:51.260 --> 44:57.500] [SPEAKER_04]: Again, you can go to our website, thetelephonemuseum.org.
[44:57.780 --> 45:04.040] [SPEAKER_04]: And on that website, you will see a choice called Join and Support.
[45:04.340 --> 45:08.220] [SPEAKER_04]: And there is a form there that you can fill out.
[45:08.700 --> 45:16.720] [SPEAKER_04]: You are also very welcome to reach us by telephone, or email, or email.
[45:16.720 --> 45:22.120] [SPEAKER_04]: And if you wish to call, you may reach our event contact.
[45:22.560 --> 45:31.320] [SPEAKER_04]: And that number is 978-973-0356.
[45:31.600 --> 45:35.480] [SPEAKER_04]: 978-973-0356.
[45:35.760 --> 45:45.720] [SPEAKER_04]: Or you can email your willingness to donate and we'll be very, very happy and very, very efficient at getting back to you.
[45:46.440 --> 45:49.060] [SPEAKER_04]: If you wish to reach us by email,
[45:54.180 --> 45:57.860] [SPEAKER_04]: ttmlakemary.switchboard at gmail.com.
[45:58.040 --> 46:02.020] [SPEAKER_04]: That's ttm.switchboard at gmail.com.
[46:02.180 --> 46:04.060] [SPEAKER_04]: And again, thanks for asking, guys.
[46:04.560 --> 46:04.760] [SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
[46:04.880 --> 46:10.380] [SPEAKER_12]: This is a 501c3 charitable organization, so all donations are tax deductible, right?
[46:11.280 --> 46:11.880] [SPEAKER_12]: That's correct.
[46:12.780 --> 46:13.580] [SPEAKER_03]: 501c3, yep.
[46:13.880 --> 46:17.720] [SPEAKER_07]: And then that email address was tpm, as in the phone museum?
[46:18.800 --> 46:20.080] [SPEAKER_03]: The telephone museum, yep.
[46:20.300 --> 46:23.040] [SPEAKER_03]: ttm.switchboard at gmail.com.
[46:23.040 --> 46:26.740] [SPEAKER_07]: T-T-M, as in the telephone museum.switchboard at gmail.com.
[46:26.840 --> 46:27.060] [SPEAKER_07]: That's right.
[46:27.600 --> 46:27.980] [SPEAKER_07]: Great.
[46:28.360 --> 46:31.660] [SPEAKER_12]: Hey, Rob, do we have time to take any listener calls about this stuff?
[46:31.840 --> 46:34.400] [SPEAKER_07]: We maybe have time to take a couple of quick calls.
[46:34.640 --> 46:42.060] [SPEAKER_07]: If you want to get your calls in very quickly, the number to reach us on air, 1718-780-8888.
[46:42.600 --> 46:47.300] [SPEAKER_07]: And you can speak with our guests, speak with us about things we've been talking about on today's program.
[46:48.480 --> 46:53.700] [SPEAKER_07]: While we wait for those of us to come in, yes, the telephone museum.
[46:54.160 --> 46:58.880] [SPEAKER_07]: And how might folks arrange visits to the facility?
[47:01.560 --> 47:07.540] [SPEAKER_03]: So if you'd like to visit, probably the best thing to do is to get on the website.
[47:08.280 --> 47:11.800] [SPEAKER_03]: All the directions and the information you can find there.
[47:12.900 --> 47:16.360] [SPEAKER_03]: We are normally open in the summer on Saturday afternoon.
[47:17.040 --> 47:20.180] [SPEAKER_03]: But if that's not convenient for you, then please give us a call.
[47:20.900 --> 47:23.460] [SPEAKER_03]: And hopefully we can arrange an alternative.
[47:23.920 --> 47:24.280] [SPEAKER_07]: Okay, great.
[47:24.480 --> 47:26.000] [SPEAKER_03]: We are always open to that.
[47:26.220 --> 47:26.480] [SPEAKER_07]: All right.
[47:26.580 --> 47:28.860] [SPEAKER_07]: Our telephone equipment here is starting to light up.
[47:29.020 --> 47:31.060] [SPEAKER_07]: So let's see who is out there tonight.
[47:31.240 --> 47:31.560] [SPEAKER_07]: Good evening.
[47:31.680 --> 47:32.220] [SPEAKER_07]: You're on Off The Hook.
[47:32.840 --> 47:33.240] [SPEAKER_13]: Hi.
[47:34.080 --> 47:37.540] [SPEAKER_13]: I have to echo the sentiment, I think, of Bernie S.
[47:37.540 --> 47:45.500] [SPEAKER_13]: If not, it was somebody else there about what a pleasure it was to hear those internal telephone company tones.
[47:46.580 --> 47:50.220] [SPEAKER_13]: It was actually very nostalgic, would be the only word.
[47:51.040 --> 47:52.700] [SPEAKER_13]: I have a question.
[47:53.220 --> 48:00.260] [SPEAKER_13]: Calling from Woodstock, but I grew up in suburban New York in the early 70s.
[48:00.520 --> 48:10.660] [SPEAKER_13]: And one of the telephone circuits that was very beloved by a lot of us was crossbar five.
[48:11.200 --> 48:20.200] [SPEAKER_13]: And I'm hearing the people from the museum talk about number five crossbar as an earlier system.
[48:20.400 --> 48:35.720] [SPEAKER_13]: But this was a very nice Touch-Tone system that seemed to be dedicated to getting the call through and getting it clearly without all of the add-ons, like call waiting or anything that interfered.
[48:35.960 --> 48:41.160] [SPEAKER_13]: And it was very nice to play with, with either a black box or a blue box.
[48:41.520 --> 48:48.240] [SPEAKER_13]: And I'm wondering if that is the same system that your guest is talking about.
[48:49.260 --> 48:50.900] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's exactly the same.
[48:51.060 --> 48:56.020] [SPEAKER_03]: Some people call it number five crossbar or number five or five crossbar, but it's all the same thing.
[48:56.180 --> 49:03.960] [SPEAKER_03]: And we have one of the only two that we know of that are remaining working at this point.
[49:04.040 --> 49:05.160] [SPEAKER_13]: Oh, that's beautiful.
[49:05.440 --> 49:11.180] [SPEAKER_13]: I thought there was a system that predated crossbar five called crossbar one.
[49:11.420 --> 49:17.880] [SPEAKER_13]: And you mentioned three, but I'm wondering if you know or have any of the old crossbar one equipment.
[49:19.020 --> 49:20.200] [SPEAKER_03]: No, we don't.
[49:20.720 --> 49:26.160] [SPEAKER_03]: Crossbar one was an, you're right, it was an earlier system and it's quite a different design.
[49:27.060 --> 49:32.440] [SPEAKER_03]: And the number three crossbar is really a little brother of the five crossbar.
[49:32.660 --> 49:34.320] [SPEAKER_03]: The designs are quite similar.
[49:35.420 --> 49:37.060] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a very small system.
[49:37.260 --> 49:40.240] [SPEAKER_03]: It was only good for up to, I think, about 1,200 lines.
[49:40.460 --> 49:51.640] [SPEAKER_03]: It was supposed to be for rural locations where they wanted some of the features that they could provide with a crossbar system, such as automatic toll billing and the like.
[49:53.340 --> 49:55.820] [SPEAKER_03]: It was quite a belated system.
[49:55.980 --> 49:58.640] [SPEAKER_03]: The number three crossbar, I think, is from the early seventies.
[49:58.920 --> 50:01.160] [SPEAKER_03]: There were only about 25 of them produced.
[50:02.140 --> 50:09.300] [SPEAKER_03]: It was kind of the last gasp, if you like, for crossbar, because after that, they came out with some of the small ESS systems.
[50:09.720 --> 50:10.060] [SPEAKER_12]: Excellent.
[50:10.120 --> 50:17.880] [SPEAKER_12]: I just wanted to point out that the caller, I recognized the voice of Randy Steele from Woodstock 104.
[50:18.640 --> 50:25.060] [SPEAKER_12]: And Randy is kind enough to simulcast this show off the hook every week on Woodstock 104 in Woodstock, New York.
[50:25.200 --> 50:27.740] [SPEAKER_12]: So listeners up in Woodstock are hearing this live on the radio, too.
[50:28.160 --> 50:30.520] [SPEAKER_13]: Oh, it's not any sort of kindness.
[50:30.720 --> 50:31.520] [SPEAKER_13]: I love the show.
[50:32.400 --> 50:33.080] [SPEAKER_13]: Thank you.
[50:33.360 --> 50:37.640] [SPEAKER_13]: And this was, this was definitely a trip into the good old days for me.
[50:37.760 --> 50:38.980] [SPEAKER_13]: And thank you very much.
[50:38.980 --> 50:39.700] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[50:39.960 --> 50:40.320] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, thank you.
[50:40.320 --> 50:42.260] [SPEAKER_07]: Thank you very much for showing it off.
[50:42.400 --> 50:42.560] [SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[50:42.640 --> 50:43.620] [SPEAKER_07]: And thank you very much for your call.
[50:43.880 --> 50:44.220] [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[50:44.400 --> 50:49.540] [SPEAKER_07]: Let's see if we can, let's see if we can squeeze another in, in the limited time we have left, see who else is out there.
[50:49.880 --> 50:50.240] [SPEAKER_07]: Good evening.
[50:50.340 --> 50:50.920] [SPEAKER_07]: You're on off the hook.
[50:51.800 --> 50:52.780] [SPEAKER_11]: What a great show.
[50:53.180 --> 50:55.720] [SPEAKER_11]: Thanks for, thanks for having them on.
[50:56.580 --> 50:57.200] [SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
[50:57.540 --> 50:57.920] [SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
[50:58.460 --> 51:00.840] [SPEAKER_11]: I'm heading up to Maine for a couple of weeks.
[51:01.380 --> 51:02.600] [SPEAKER_11]: So I will be there.
[51:03.540 --> 51:08.260] [SPEAKER_11]: Um, I have, uh, my original blue box that I built in 1968.
[51:08.480 --> 51:10.560] [SPEAKER_11]: I have it somewhere still.
[51:11.340 --> 51:13.640] [SPEAKER_11]: So I will take that with me and play with that.
[51:13.800 --> 51:14.400] [SPEAKER_11]: I go up there.
[51:14.900 --> 51:15.280] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[51:15.500 --> 51:23.440] [SPEAKER_11]: And, and I have a box of Stoker gears, probably six or seven of them, brand new in the box with the wrapping.
[51:24.000 --> 51:26.780] [SPEAKER_11]: And I will be happy to donate those as well.
[51:27.860 --> 51:28.340] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[51:28.480 --> 51:30.840] [SPEAKER_07]: Could you, uh, could you describe what those are for, uh, those unfamiliar?
[51:31.580 --> 51:32.260] I'm sorry?
[51:32.520 --> 51:35.680] [SPEAKER_07]: Could, could you, uh, could you describe what those are for those who, who don't know?
[51:36.280 --> 51:36.640] [SPEAKER_11]: Sure.
[51:36.840 --> 51:43.520] [SPEAKER_11]: A Stoker gear was used in a step office and it was developed by this guy named, I believe his name was Robert Stoker.
[51:44.280 --> 51:51.280] [SPEAKER_11]: And it is a electromechanical device that, uh, uh, dialed pulse switch.
[51:52.100 --> 51:54.440] [SPEAKER_11]: This thing would actually click the digit.
[51:54.620 --> 51:59.420] [SPEAKER_11]: So if it was a nine, it would click nine clicks and then swing back.
[51:59.540 --> 52:03.300] [SPEAKER_11]: And it would go to the next number and it would click that number and then swing back.
[52:03.640 --> 52:05.460] [SPEAKER_12]: And he was an undertaker, wasn't he?
[52:05.920 --> 52:06.260] Right.
[52:06.460 --> 52:08.360] [SPEAKER_11]: I believe he was, as a matter of fact.
[52:08.680 --> 52:11.940] [SPEAKER_12]: Um, and he, he did that because, uh, he was losing business.
[52:14.280 --> 52:15.560] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and he was a ticker.
[52:15.760 --> 52:22.160] [SPEAKER_03]: He was losing business when he discovered that, uh, the local telephone operator was related to the other undertaker in town.
[52:22.320 --> 52:25.040] [SPEAKER_03]: And of course, you couldn't, uh, that was all going.
[52:27.000 --> 52:28.380] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not sure I knew all that.
[52:28.500 --> 52:41.300] [SPEAKER_04]: He had a lot of time on his hands and, uh, realized that the solution was not, was not, uh, honest operators, but the real solution was no operators.
[52:41.700 --> 52:44.140] [SPEAKER_04]: And he set out to make that possible.
[52:44.780 --> 52:45.240] [SPEAKER_07]: Wow.
[52:45.460 --> 52:45.780] [SPEAKER_07]: Fantastic.
[52:46.060 --> 52:50.820] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, we, we look forward to you visiting and, uh, and thank you in advance for the, for the donation.
[52:50.820 --> 52:52.080] [SPEAKER_03]: It sounds very interesting.
[52:52.960 --> 52:53.240] [SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely.
[52:53.440 --> 52:53.540] [SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.
[52:53.660 --> 52:57.940] [SPEAKER_11]: If you don't have any, I'll bring a couple up and, uh, turn them loose on you.
[52:57.980 --> 52:58.520] [SPEAKER_11]: It'll be fun.
[52:58.700 --> 53:07.500] [SPEAKER_11]: So I'll see you in the next couple of Saturdays as I head up to Maine for my, uh, for my band and, uh, to go see this amazing telephone.
[53:07.780 --> 53:08.420] [SPEAKER_11]: I can't wait.
[53:08.520 --> 53:09.760] [SPEAKER_11]: I've been playing with stuff like that.
[53:09.780 --> 53:14.320] [SPEAKER_03]: Give us a call first just to make sure we're, we're, that we've got somebody to be there, just in case.
[53:14.460 --> 53:14.580] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[53:15.160 --> 53:16.300] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you said Saturday.
[53:17.360 --> 53:17.740] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[53:17.920 --> 53:18.120] [SPEAKER_07]: Excellent.
[53:18.860 --> 53:24.800] [SPEAKER_07]: Well, um, thank you very much for that, uh, phone call, which I believe will have to be our last as we're just about out of time.
[53:25.180 --> 53:29.860] [SPEAKER_07]: But, uh, one last time, send us email oth@2600.com.
[53:30.140 --> 53:37.360] [SPEAKER_07]: Uh, go to hope.net to get the info on what's going on with our hope conference, which is in around five weeks, five weeks.
[53:37.540 --> 53:44.920] [SPEAKER_07]: Uh, you know, in insanely enough, it's, uh, it's all happening again, Hotel Pennsylvania and Midtown Manhattan, um, hope.net hope conf on Twitter.
[53:45.620 --> 53:48.520] [SPEAKER_07]: And, uh, yes, for off the hook, this is Rob T. Firefly.
[53:49.060 --> 53:52.040] [SPEAKER_07]: Thank you very much to our guests from the telephone museum.
[53:52.240 --> 53:54.820] [SPEAKER_07]: Um, thank you to Bernie S. for finagling all that.
[53:55.160 --> 53:57.120] [SPEAKER_07]: And we will leave you with this.
[53:57.260 --> 53:58.140] [SPEAKER_07]: Have a very good night.
[53:58.480 --> 54:00.080] [SPEAKER_07]: Stay tuned for the personal computer show.